BENGALURU: Egg lovers in Namma Bengaluru are stewing over soaring prices. In the past 20 days, the prices have gone up by almost 50 per cent in the retail market, forcing consumers to look at other cheaper options.
They were sold in retail outlets at around Rs 4-4.50 per egg, but now they reached an all time high of '7-7.50.
"Last week rate of a single egg was '4.50. When I went to buy some eggs to prepare bread omelette for my child before his school van arrives, I was shocked when the shopkeeper told me to pay at the rate of '7 per egg," said Deepa, a homemaker at Chamrajpet.
She lamented that when the prices of vegetables soared, they went for cheaper options like eggs, but now even that has become dearer.
When asked about the reason for the sudden spike in egg price, Manikanta, a wholesale egg dealer at Arisinakunte cited two reasons. Firstly during winter season the birds lay fewer eggs and secondly there is a huge demand for eggs in northern parts of the country as egg production there has been severely hit due to cold wave conditions, he elaborated.
Bengaluru gets its egg supply mainly from Hospet in Karnataka and Namakkal from Tamil Nadu, he added.
Nearly 2 crore eggs used to be supplied to Bengaluru daily. But for the past few days it has come down to 1.5 crore. A portion of the stock, meant for Bengaluru, is now being sold to traders from north India at a higher price, said Madhu, a poultry farm owner at Anekal.
